36 Ford truck on Ranger

OI, my sense of humour has been tramped on a wee bit lately, so I couldn't make a joke if I tried. And I wasn't trying.
The paint has healed up a bit over night and the blobs have settled down somewhat, so I'm going to maybe drive it this way until fall.

Sorry MM, didn't know you have had a rough go lately.
As nice a job as you're doing, when you said rattle can, it kinda threw me.

Sorry to scare you OI, but I could do a better job of painting with the rattle-cans than my spray gun. I'm usually a flaming optimist, but this painting has put my flame out,-------temporarily, I hope.
A friend came over to visit so he had to help me and I got my fenders back on and the welting installed. I'll have to live with the spatter until fall, unless I start a new movement that likes yukky paint-jobs.

looks good from here

I understand that oh so well.
I'm less than half-assed at painting.
The only time I done a job that caused me to pat myself on the back was when I painted the dash in my wife's 56 Chevy.
It was Corvette medium metallic blue, came out like a paint shop and I used a jamb gun to boot.
There's a thought for ya, try using a jamb gun on the smaller stuff like fenders.

What's a jamb gun?
Operator error is the real problem here I think, because my gun is from Napa and is reasonably expensive. I've been fairly lucky with it, before this episode, so haven't learned anything.

What kind of paint are you shooting Mac. Single stage enamel? Base coat/Clear coat?
Some tips from my"For what it's worth file" about painting.
Strain everything real well.. Check your air line for moisture. I don't have a water trap on mine. I just drain the tank before I paint. I always shoot a sealer over the primer before I paint. Got in the habit of doing that back in my Lacquer days.
I also just use a standard reducer and watch the weather for a good day.
I never use the ratio of reducer to paint that they call for. The paint on the Olds engine called for 8-4-1. 8 parts paint to 4 parts reducer to 1 part hardner. I used about 1 part reducer.Maybe slightly more.
And If I showed you the gun that I use most painters would laugh. It's a 40 year old Devilbliss. I can't even remember what tip it has. Plus I never shoot above 35 PSI of air and sometimes lkess depending on how the paint is flowing unless I am shooting metallic.
Don't beat yourself up about your paiting skills as I know some guys that could build the space shuttle in their garage and freak out at the thought of painting their own cars.
For me that's the best part of the build...
Torchie
p.s. The "Jamb" gun tha OI refers to is a small version on a regular spray gun. We used to call then cut in guns because we used them to cut in fenders and such before the body guys put them on the cars.

What Todd Said

It's not a trailer queen is it [S
I get spatter now and then and it usually is water in the line and i do have traps[S
i like the gravity feed guns, low pressure high volume less over spray. i use good old cheap guns, full size and touch up.
Also i find the more i paint the better i get but most of my jobs are far between.
one more thing i do is put on lots of paint, color sand and polish it out, makes soso jobs look pretty good.
good luck with it and don't let the little things get you down and remember most all things are little

I love to paint .. I aint worth a crap at it , but I found if its like and orange peal ,,, .. or dry misting ...kind of rough looking ? I put a little more reducer in it ... not much or it will run down the car... if your reducer is good maybe holding the gun to far away from the parts your painting .. Just my 2 cents .. every one paints different I have some old guns and if it sprays about 8 to 10 inch pattern hold it about 8 inches away from the parts your painting ... but thats just me .. it works good for some and not others ,,, nothing wrong with a cheap gun just so it works correctly.. look at it this way ... water sand it smooth like glass with some 320 wet/dry , then paint it again ,, you have a good base coat now and I do have a $2 water filter screwed right in my gun ..just to keep that spit of water coming out at that wrong moment ..

Thank you guys. I am trying to learn about painting so all of your tips are noted. Torchie, it's single stage Imron 2.1 paint.
This air compressor is quite new so I trusted it to be clean, but for some reason I did drain the water out of the bottom and found a bunch of dirty water there. I'm betting that there was still some water in the pump and airlines. I had run out of strainers so I skipped that step this time.
I have a regulator right on my gun handle, set at 30 lbs.
The mix was written down for me; 6 parts paint, 2 parts activator, 1 part reducer.
The paint is maybe two years old, sitting in the bottom of the gallon can.

Soltz, it is not a trailer queen, ----- but I do want it to look nice-ish. I don't ever want to see Old Iron throwing up in the ditch again, just because I wanted to rattle-can parts of my truck. I will learn to paint, by gosh.

Yes you will [cl. Like i tell my kid, practice practice nothing you an t do

"I don't ever want to see Old Iron throwing up in the ditch again, just because I wanted to rattle-can parts of my truck."
[cl

Hats off to ya for wanting to do all the work! Ya know all that smoothing your doing trying to get the paint looking good is leading into another "drive time reducer"! When ya get the paint looking good, just think of all the driving time you'll lose trying to keep it shiney...jk. To each his own...[cl
Honestly, it's looking good!

Thank you Smallfoot. I seem to get as much out of building as driving, maybe more, so it's hard to stay arrogant about my building if I keep screwing it up. The fenders look good until you get close-up.
I have been re-clocking the pinion shaft angle slowly, so I redid it again this year, because it isn't good enough yet. At high-way speed there is still a fine vibration. There is now, two, four degree wedges in under the springs. I've been having troubles finding flat surfaces that are parallel to the appropriate shafts to get good readings on shaft angles. Compounding the troubles is the fact that I don't have a hoist yet, so I have to do all of this measuring and changing while lying on my back, using only one arm jambed under the frame, and using only one eye,[jambed under the frame] and that eye is now vertical instead of horizontal. My horizontal stabilizer level doesn't work very well when I'm using only one eye, and it's vertical. Life's a bitch, sometimes, right?
Once you get that many wedges under the spring, the centre bolt head is too short to reach down into the spring perch hole, so you have to weld an extention on each one, to keep your rear-end straight under your truck, [think dogtracking].

Know the feeling.
I worked on my back for decades till buying the lift I have.

Maiden voyage news, guys. I took Mrs. MM out to the A&W poker rally tonight as a date night. The date worked out quite well and the truck also passed most of the tests. I had lowered the back end of the truck and beefed up the suspension with load leveller shocks. It rides nicely.
I had fixed three water leaks that irked me when I was washing the the truck each time, and they are pretty darn good now. The gas leak in the old mechanical pump is fixed, [in a rather hillbilly way but no-one noticed]. My back fenders smoothed out a bit with aggressive washing and dried with a few water spots on the new paint so nothing was said about that either.
The pinion angle is better but not perfect so that was a partial fail. Out on the highway there is still a faint vibration from about 35 mph to 70 mph.
Oh ya, I found out that you can still wash a flathead distributor too much. I was dressed up a bit for the Mrs. so I only had my whitest hanky with me to clean out the distributor cap. Life's a bitch sometimes.

Mac if you're that far out on the pinion, I believe I'd jack it up, pull the rearend out and re-weld the spring perches. I've got single wedges in mine now and it's almost right but if I change it again, I'll re-weld. About the best way to get on the rearend to measure the angle would be to drop the shaft and go across the pinion housing I believe. Sounds like you are close, keep working at it![cl

Food for thought Smallfoot, but I better keep adjusting this way until I know where it should be. Two separate suspension problems led me into this angle dilemma. The twin I-beams at the front made me raise the front of the motor up a bit more for clearance, slanting the motor and trans heavily downwards at the back, and, I flipped the back spring hangers and shackles to lower the rear of the truck quite a bit, but that also clocked the rear-end down in the front somewhat. So the angles of the two shafts that I want to be parallel were getting further away from perfect with every modification I performed. I'm the only guy that I can curse out for this mess, unless I'm barking up the wrong tree entirely, and I have a bent wheel on the rear passenger side.

My friend that's making a '46 Fargo on a Dakota said, "Why don't you roll your truck up on my hoist for few minutes." I was over to his place like a shot, and up on the hoist, measuring angles. The rear-end is 4* up in the front, [good], the driveshaft is at 0*, parallel to the ground, [good], but the transmission is at 8* down at the back, [not so good].
I will now make a one inch spacer for under the transmission mount and see if that straightens out that front U-joint angle a wee bit. If I can bring the extension housing up at the back, 4* then I think I'll be laughing all the way to the bank. Am I an optimist or what?